What was the cause of her incandescent rage? Would her anxiety subside? 

Blood. Everywhere. Blood on her hands, smeared on her thighs. Where had it come from?

The morning sun peeped through the gap in the heavy curtains. She sat up in bed and did a quick inventory. Check nightclothes, pyjama bottoms intact. Check arms. The usual scars like silver tramlines shining in the chink of light.

Swinging her legs over the bed, she stood up quickly glancing over to the empty space where her husband should have been.

Opening the bedroom door, she walked on her bare tiptoes to the bathroom. Her dim reflection loomed at her in the mirrored doors of the bathroom cabinet. Opening it, she cast her eye over the contents. Pills sitting snugly in their bottles, undisturbed.

Leaving the bathroom, she ran nimbly on the balls of her feet hearing the stripped wooden floorboards squeak on her bare skin.

In the kitchen she quietly pulled open the top drawer - knives all present and correct.

Detecting movement, she looked up saw the back of her brutish husband through the window, taking last night’s rubbish out, no signs of violence upon him. 

The events of the previous week began to coalesce and solidify; the two bottles of red wine she’d consumed on Friday night, the screaming, the slapping, her husband restraining her wrists as she tried to lash out, flailing about in her incandescent rage.

Saturday morning, she’d sat sulkily at the breakfast table, hungover, her head pounding, stomach churning, resenting the way her husband ate his porridge; it had taken all her willpower not to throw her bowl at him across the table.

Monday morning, the call to the GP, appointment made for the following day. Sitting in the doctor’s office, tears rolling down her face, pleading for help, her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands as she kept a lid on her hysteria.

Standing in the queue at the pharmacy, the prescription clutched in her sweaty hand, trembling in case she bumped into someone she knew.

Her surprise at the non-descript box with its blue lettering containing patches; two per week, one round, one rectangular, both transparent.

Thursday evening. She’d had to put her glasses on to undo the tiny sachet and remove the clear patch, peeling the backing off and pressing it to her skin. That night she had lain awake for hours, imagining the hormones flowing through her veins; would she feel different come morning? Instead, she tossed and turned on a lumpy sea, now hot, now cold. She finally got to sleep about five o’clock, only to wake grainy eyed with a dull headache.

She felt the same, exactly the same. Depressed, anxious, weepy, bloated and angry. Oh boy, so angry. She’d never known anger like it, a red mist that descended blotting out everything except the need to maim and hurt. The only thing that took the edge off was sinking to the bottom of a bottle of merlot. Her best friend. Her insulation against a harsh world.

Her eyes slid to the calendar hanging on the wall. She smiled ruefully. Now, however, no monthly visitor, just a constant companion of a clear plastic patch.

She looked forward to the next month. Time to take those empty wine bottles out and clear the decks.